I remember…

I know you all are thinking doesn’t God watch everyone? And I believe the answer to that is “yes.” However I truly feel like God has been watching me since I was a child…

I remember when I was in sixth grade it was the “big year” of middle school, lockers, gym uniforms (uh remember those?) and new friends…

I remember turning the hall for the first time and seeing “them”…

For the first time in my life, I saw an entire class of special needs children. A whole class! I was so intrigued by them. Who were they? Where did they come from? Where have they been for the last 6 years? How come I never saw them in my school before?

I pondered these questions each time I saw them…

Who are their families? How come I didn’t ever know them?

I remember seeing them walk in the halls together; eating lunch together and I just sat and wondered…

I remember seeing many of my peers ignore them…

Laugh at them…

Point at them…

Make fun of them….

And it just upset me….

And I used to wonder, why? Why did this bother me so much? They weren’t related to me… I wasn’t one of them…

But for years and years I wondered about them and their challenges… Why were they born like that? What is going to happen to them?

I wasn’t really a curious child about to much but for some reason this just seemed to strike a chord with me…

Back then we didn’t have programs where the disabled population was included with the regular children, and I remember wishing that there was… I wanted to know these children; I wanted to be their friend…

I was always nice and said “hello” as I passed them in the hall as my peers looked the other way pretending they were invisible.

It just bothered me…

After middle school I never saw “that class” again, that group of special needs children again and I wondered; where did they go? What were they doing?

And then “life” as it has its way of doing kept moving on and I stopped thinking about the special needs population and I graduated from high school and college…

Sounds like He knew what He was doing. Interestingly, I also always felt drawn to special needs children, and was convinced that I was going to have one. Now I have 2 children and they are both pretty healthy, it makes me wonder what is in my future…